Sin City (film)

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Sin City
Directed byRobert Rodriguez
Frank Miller
Quentin Tarantino
Written byFrank Miller
Robert Rodriguez
Produced byRobert Rodriguez
Elizabeth Avellan
Frank Miller
StarringBruce Willis
Jessica Alba
Mickey Rourke
Clive Owen
Music byJohn Debney
Graeme Revell
Robert Rodriguez
Distributed byDimension Films
Running time
126 min.
Budget$40,000,000 (estimated)

Sin City is a 2005 neo-noir film based on the graphic novels of the same name, directed by Robert Rodriguez. Rodriguez also gave Sin City creator Frank Miller a directing credit on the film, crediting his visual style and its influence on the resulting film. The Director's Guild of America refused to allow Rodriguez the co-crediting of Miller and, as a result, Rodriguez resigned from the Guild to avoid both making a compromise and setting a precedent. Quentin Tarantino is credited as "Special Guest Director" for his role in directing one scene in the movie.

The movie was released in cinemas across the US on April 1, 2005 by Dimension Films. The tagline for the film, Walk down the right back alley in Sin City and you can find anything, is a quotation from the graphic novels.

Originally, creator Frank Miller did not want to release the movie rights of Sin City, because of a poor Hollywood experience in the early 1990s (namely the second two Robocop movies). But when director Robert Rodriguez shot a 'proof of concept' short movie of the Sin City story The Customer is Always Right (starring Josh Hartnett and Marley Shelton, who did this for Rodriguez as a favor), and Frank Miller approved of the footage, the movie was underway. Supposedly, Rodriguez also used the short film to convince the actors he wanted for parts to play those. Reportedly, most were quite impressed.

The movie is primarily based on four Sin City stories:

The movie also includes a short epilogue written explicitly for the movie by Rodriguez and Miller.

Movie Structure

The movie is constructed around three loosely connected, stand-alone stories with a short, also stand-alone introductory sequence and a short epilogue that are not necessarily presented in chronological order. The movie opens with "The Customer is Always Right," (though this segment uses the red dress from another short story in "The Babe Wore Red" collection) after which it segues into the opening credit sequence. Following this, the first part of "That Yellow Bastard" is shown. Then the entirety of "The Hard Goodbye" is shown, followed by "The Big Fat Kill." The rest of "That Yellow Bastard" is then shown, followed by a short sequence featuring two characters from the film that ties in with "The Customer is Always Right" and "The Big Fat Kill" that was designed and written for the movie.

Filming techniques

The Sin City movie employed the use of high-definition digital cameras, having the actors play in front of a green screen, that allowed for the synthetic backgrounds (as well as some major foreground elements, such as cars) to be added later during the post-production stage. While the use of a green screen isn't noteworthy, the use of high-definition digital cameras is. The combination of these two techniques makes Sin City one of the few fully-digital live action motion pictures. This technique also means that the whole movie was initially shot in full colour, and was converted back to high-quality black and white. This technique makes it possible to give colour only to certain subjects in a scene, such as eyes, lips, or clothing. The movie was color corrected digitally with the use of a DLP Cinema projector, and as in film noir tradition treated for heightened contrast so as to more clearly separate blacks and whites.

Trivia

  • Following Rodriguez's scoring of Tarantino's Kill Bill: Vol. 2 for $1, Quentin Tarantino directed a scene of Sin City for $1. Tarantino had previously advocated film over the digital techniques used for Sin City, but was interested to get to work with the digital cameras preferred by Rodriguez.
Tarantino directed the scene featured in "The Big Fat Kill" in which Dwight drives Det. Jack "Jackie Boy" Rafferty to the "pits". Tarantino wanted to use a real car for the scene but was unable to get the angles he wanted. Rodriguez convinced him to film on a partial set of the automobile interior, constructing the car's roof and sides using CGI, which ultimatly resulted in Tarantino getting the shots he desired.
  • Quentin Tarantino appears in the conclusion of "That Yellow Bastard" during the bar scene, sitting next to Marv as they watch Nancy dance. He is the special guest director.
  • Robert Rodriguez dropped out of the Directors Guild of America to be able to direct the movie with Frank Miller, because the Directors Guild has a policy that professional directors cannot share credit with non-directors, which almost always translates into one director per movie. The rule was created after the Guild saw how the producer credit was being distorted to satisfy the egos of too many movie executives — many films today have far too many executive producers, producers, assistant producers, and so on. The Guild waives this rule frequently for "bona fide teams", which they didn't consider Rodriguez and Miller to be, as Miller had no experience in film directing.

Cast

(Organized by the story they primarily appear in)

The Customer is Always Right

Sin City (The Hard Goodbye)

The Big Fat Kill

That Yellow Bastard


Sin City 2

Considering the success of the movie, Rodriguez said that he is keen on shooting a sequel with another set of Miller's stories. The possibility of Johnny Depp appearing in the film, a rumour being circulated on the internet, has been the basis for much of the speculation.

See also

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